


and the world your bed

by friendly_ficus



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, is it introspection if it’s just your dreams because i feel like that doesn’t count, not even really a character study??? just having dreams, spoilers up to PZN 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22627456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: Clementine Kesh has a string of nights where her sleep is best described astroubled.(The best bedclothes money can buy do not guarantee easy dreams.)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	and the world your bed

**Author's Note:**

> writing about dreams may be cliche but i am not afraid of cliche, in fact i embrace it. that being said i want you to know going into this fic it's literally just a series of dreams with little to no coherent plot

It doesn’t matter what planet they’re on. 

(Clem could summon up the name of it, if she needed to. She’d had to learn it at some point or another; the Farmer’s Sin was an ‘important historical moment,’ according to a tutor she’d had when she was twelve. Clem had not been an eager student.) 

It doesn’t matter what planet they’re on, though, because it’s all already happened and it isn’t about to change.

The younger face of Sovereign Immunity gives Clem what she imagines is a common look for him. He’s in farmer’s clothes. There's a squirming bundle in his arms; she can’t tell if the child is beating against his chest in a futile attempt at escape or trying to cling to him. Does it matter? Clem is dreaming, does _that_ matter?

Dust and bits of straw are getting in Clem’s hair from where she’s leaned against a hay bale. The hem of her dress is already looking gray from... farm. "Why did you kidnap this child?"

He’s smiling like he did in a picture she’d seen once, as a young girl. Her parents, steely and uncompromising in their respective uniforms and their benevolent Sovereign Immunity in the background, as much a part of the furniture as he was anything else. His presence at her mother’s left shoulder nothing more than an extra indication of legitimacy, like the medals on their chests. 

“Why did you betray my parents?” she asks, because light is beginning to bleed through the wooden slats of the barn and there’s no time, she can hear the mechs converging and she knows how this story ends.

His smile doesn’t change but his eyes are as somber and sharp as they were in her lounge. 

"Practice," he says, like the very word doesn’t send her reeling. He shifts the child in his arms and turns away.

Clem wakes before the Apostolosian troops break down the door. 

\---

"You never dream about me, huh?" Exeter Leap leans against a massive fallen pillar. Clem does not have to look around to know where they are; the air is grim and dusty and the debris field goes out for miles. Over the next slope, just beyond her sight, a scientist is digging through the corpse of Past as well. A mirror to their group’s autopsy, and one she knows she cannot allow to stand.

Clem's gun rests against her side the same way it always has.

"Even when I’m in it, it’s not about me. What’s up with that?" He crunches down on a handful of protein-enriched snack mix.

Clem draws her pistol. She can hear the mech coming. She needs to be next to the scientist when Saint Dawn arrives.

"You think you _get me_ already," Leap groans, shaking his head. "You think you figured me out. C'mon, Princess, you don't know _anything."_

\---

Clem leans forward, hungry, the fur collar of her coat brushing against the front of her throat. She is seated on the throne, the map splayed out in the floor before her and a vague mass of Kesh residents wreathing the scene. Immediately near her are Sovereign Immunity, respectfully at her left, and Gucci a few steps from her right, flicking through notes. And Cas’alear Rizah, caught in a kneel in front of her.

“Make no mistake,” Clem says, “the refusal of Stel Apostolos to allow Stel Kesh movement and salvage rights within the debris area would constitute an aggressive act and we would have to respond in kind.”

From behind her comes a sigh. “That was a big moment for you, wasn’t it?” 

She stiffens, stands suddenly. Feels like the throne was too much, was burning her, and as she turns to face the speaker the rest of the scene fractures around her, color fading and flaking away. 

Cas’alear Rizah smiles slightly, the way Clem had seen them smile at Sovereign Immunity. Not mocking, not exactly, but indulgent. They’re standing on the dock at Obelle, and the rest of the throne room vanishes when she looks at them. There’s wind coming over the water; Clem shivers, cold.

“The only time I would ever kneel for you, Clementine Kesh, would be for my execution.” 

“It was more of a symbolic kneeling,” she offers.

“You do understand that it wasn’t a loss for me, right? I know it felt like a win for you, but we didn’t lose anything.” They make a gesture in the direction of the crash sight, something between a shrug and an eyeroll. “I’ve killed Elects, you know. Having a conversation about corpse rights doesn’t really register on the danger scale.”

“It was a win,” Clem says firmly. “It was a win, and I’m going to rule Stel Kesh. That throne room is real.”

“Sure,” Cas’alear mutters, turning to gaze at a strange waver at the waterline. “Sure it is, Princess.”

Clem turns again, this time to see what’s caught their attention.

In the distance, a strange mech comes over the horizon, racing in her direction and looking out and _looking at her—_

Already waking, she is caught once again in the horrifying sensation of being _seen._

\---

"Your dress looks good on me," Millie says at the bar. "We contrast—it's clever."

"I’ve never worn it," Clem says, even though she needs to find Sovereign Immunity and go to the throne room. What does it get her, for Millie to be here? What does any of this get her, the dress and the squad and the wake?

"Come dance," Millie offers, smile like a gunshot. Clem already knows what a scene that would be, her dancing with the only Apostolosian in the palace tonight. Her dancing with any Apostolosian now, in wartime. 

"Come dance," she repeats, the twist of her mouth making it sound less like an invitation and more like an insult. She’s thinking that Clem is a coward.

Clem shakes her head, tasting champagne. Her flute is empty and Gucci is watching the two of them, seeing Leap at Millie’s side and piecing together a structure of a facet of the truth—Clem downs another drink too quickly to appreciate it, and when she resurfaces the colors of the wake are swirling all around her like ink through water, the red of Gucci’s dress and the teal of Millie’s hair clashing against each other, refusing to blend.

**Author's Note:**

> clem is the Worst i adore her i love the rapid evening i love partizan what a start to a season huh wow. Cas’alear bringing big “for me it was tuesday” energy to this fic  
> title comes from a lyric in the song 'After All' by The Altogether  
> uh, my first work in the fandom! hope it was a good read, like i said i know people do dream stuff a lot but i really like it so i figured i’d throw my hat in the ring


End file.
